Players A and B were heads up on the river. Player A bet, and Player B called.

Player A tabled his hand. Player B looked at his cards and then tossed them face down in the center of the table, signaling that he had conceded the pot.

The dealer left the cards and the board on the table. He scooped up the pot and pushed it to Player A, who started stacking them.

Player B then realized he had made a better hand, reached for his cards, and tabled them.

A few questions:

Did the hand end, and was it too late to table a better hand, after the dealer pushed the pot?

Did the dealer make a mistake? Should the correct procedure have been to muck the hand and the board before pushing the pot?

In general not too late. At showdown hands are live to be tabled until they are buried in the muck (or otherwise become unidentifiable). Discarding a hard forward doesn't automatically kill them. Pushing the pot doesn't end the timeframe for the hand (the start of the shuffle for the next hand is usually that time). But it may vary by room rules.

Yes, the dealer made an error. There is a standard procedure they should follow, which is to kill losers, then push the pot, then kill the winner and the board. There is a reason this is the procedure. This thread is a prime example of why we do it the way we do it.

Usually it’s too late to claim a winner after the dealer pushed the pot somewhere simply because at that point there shouldn’t be cards available to table.

If the dealer messed up by doing various other things instead of mucking non-tabled hands, the hand should be live.

A couple of recurring themes you will hear in ruling threads

1. The objective is to let the best hand win
2. Hands should be hard to kill, if still identifiable
3. You can't fold at showdown
4. A hand's results are when the next hand begins

So, the player could not technically fold, since he was not facing action. he could surrender his cards, but they would be live until mucked. The hand was not beyond challenging yet, as the next hand hadn't begun, and his card and the board were not yet mucked. So there is no reason to think his hand shouldn't be live and that he shouldn't win the pot.

Well done mxp ... you got 3 of the biggest hitters in this forum to respond.

/thread .. GL

[SIZE=2]What? Over? Did you say 'over'? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!...[/SIZE]

Already answered by the others, but I agree and bolded my response.

Live hand.

for the dealer.

You can if I'm dealing.

You shouldn't be able to fold when facing no action. you can surrender your cards, and have the hand killed by having the cards mucked (unless it s tournament and one or more players is all-in), but you can't fold. It is a fine point, but it is relevent in situations like this.

It is over when people think it was the Germans instead of the Japanese.

That’s the whole joke..

Forget it, he's rolling

everyone knows pearl harbour was an inside job

Needs more

Yes. As played, most often this will be ruled a live hand in a casino.